I have three lives: a mother, a student, and a lesbian. These three aspects do not smoothly intersect. In my family there were many bitten tongues when I announced that my daughter would be appearing in the Pride Parade as the Princess of Pride.
Or when I asked to bring my daughter to a lesbian-oriented social event, and the hesitant reply was, “There won’t be any other kids there.”
Or at the pediatrician’s office; when asked to fill out the emergency contact information, the receptionist’s computer insisted that my partner was my roommate.
Or the explanation that always follows the misinterpretation of my girlfriend’s name as “Nicky” and not “Nikki.”
In fact, I do a lot of explaining. Both the queer and the straight people around me want to know how, and why, I am queer and have a child. Most people do not ask out loud, but the puzzled silence – or the too-loud exclamation, “I didn’t know YOU had a DAUGHTER” – at the lesbian bar functions as an inquiry.
Similarly, I want to answer other parents’ furrowed eyebrows when I say “my partner” in my daughter’s classroom. Sometimes my answer wants to be cheeky: “Yes, some queer women have slept with men,” or “Don’t assume I’m straight.” Usually I just say nothing, let the uncomfortable silence pass, and force people to make their own assumptions. I hope that this leads them, in some way, to reconsider their expectations about people, but I suspect that they just shrug and move on.
The reaction to the details of my life is about expectations and stereotypes. Most lesbians do not have children, although lesbian mothers are becoming more and more of a common occurrence. Most single mothers do not have girlfriends. As a transgressor of expectations in both categories, I fit completely into neither.
In general, my social activities are that of a parent and not of a queer woman. My friends tend to be other mothers, because the lifestyle of a single mother eliminates most single-queer activities. With these women, I can get advice about my daughter’s unwillingness to go to bed, or her toileting issues. I can commiserate about the lack of reliable babysitters, or express my concern about her socialization in public school. With other mothers, I can talk on the phone for an hour; or I can talk for five minutes and then have to hang up because my daughter is throwing a tantrum over her shoelaces, and they understand.
I cannot go out to the bars – the hub of Portland’s queer community in many ways – without at least a week of planning and $20 for a babysitter. My gay friends’ houses have breakable things and gourmet foods that are not compatible with an energetic five-year-old’s activities. Being lesbian and being a mother is often an either-or situation, and one that tears me between my loyalties.
My student life is pretty much unaffected by either my choice of partner or by my parent status. I am lucky to belong to a community here that is open-minded. I sometimes bring my daughter to my work-study job at the GLBTQA Resource Center, and experience no clashing of roles. However, my student friends do not often enter into my personal life.
Perhaps this is simply the legacy of a society that likes to fit people into rigid categories, and thus unchangeable. However, I hope that my daughter and her friends will see that identity is flexible, not confining. I hope that the discord I experience, and the conflicts I raise, will help other people see this as well. I hope that someday we can all experience who we are today, and who we will be tomorrow, and who we were five years ago, without conflict.